Which records get shattered

On August 1, Rojas jumped I already knew. I knew from the run. I knew I couldn't miss that one. I knew it was right there," Rojas told AP. My head, my heart, my body. On August 3, just a month after breaking a year-old record with a time of Germany and Great Britain battled each other in the qualifying- and first-round races , each besting the world record, until Germany came out on top with a time of China set the women's team sprint world record at the Rio Olympics. In the final, they beat Germany by 0.

Italy posted a record-breaking time of Schoenmaker won the race with a time of Dressel earned the third of his five gold medals of the Tokyo Olympics with a time of Subscribe to our newsletter and receive our latest updates! Want to take your swimfandom to the next level?

Subscribe to SwimSwam Magazine! World Records. Paralympic Records. Day 1. Day 2. Day 3. Day 4. Day 5. Day 6. Day 7. Day 8. Day 9. Day While it may look like a regular track, Mondo, the company behind it, spent three years researching and developing the surface specifically for Tokyo The track has been precisely tuned to allow shock absorption and energy return, playing a similar role to the foam in spikes. Research on engineered track surfaces is as old as , when it was found that a compliant, resilient track surface could improve times by as much as 2.

Although the exact savings of the Tokyo track are unknown, its developers have said it could improve times by as much as 2 per cent compared with previous Olympic tracks. While it is tempting to attribute the record-breaking times to the new spike and track technologies alone, other factors are at play too. The games being delayed by a year due to the covid pandemic may actually have benefited some athletes, giving them more time to train.

Other, more variable, factors, such as the weather, can affect how an athlete performs on any given day. And above all, we cannot ignore the effort and talent of the athletes competing in these races. It may just be that we have got a particularly talented crop this year.

Overall, the record-breaking times seen in Tokyo are likely to be a combination of all the above, including fast shoes, fast tracks and extremely talented athletes.